How do we rank policies?
The problem of prioritization
Since there are only $X of tax revenue, politics is a zero sum game. We need to decide which issue is more important than the next, and by how exactly much, to be reflected in a dollar amount. According to what principle(s) do we rank national security, education, funding for the arts, highway funds, etc.? This is one the most important (and under considered) questions in political philosophy and public policy.
We can discover wonderful moral and empirical reasons why a certain policy makes great sense, but that does not help us decide which of the 100s of wonderful policies are most important, and by exactly how much. Every politician faces this dilemma when choosing which campaign promises he will push for the hardest when in office. We fail to live by good political principles if we cannot answer this question well.
Here are a few thoughts on possible answers:
1. Democracy. The democratic process prioritizes. Those issues with the greatest public support will be prioritized by politicians the most and there will be a rather refined, responsive gradient. This is a reasonable answer, but it is far from complete. First there is the “cynical, but true” response that the system is set up to favor special interests groups, rather than the public at large, and it is their priorities that dominate. But even if we ignore that, there is still something lacking in the democracy answer. Consider a clear moral issue like slavery. How do we decide whether to keep or abolish slavery? If someone were to say, “Well, the people can decide through voting,” we would consider that answer insufficient. We believe there are moral reasons why slavery is wrong that exist independent of the political process. The question considered here is what might those reasons be in the case of prioritization.
2. No theoretical answer is possible. Thomas Nagel, among other philosophers, has described a disjointed moral world. He believes there are sources of distinct value such that they often conflict with each other and we cannot make reasoned comparisons between the two. In his paper, “The Fragmentation of Value,” he argues that the sources of value are: 1. “specific obligations” (as a member of a family, for instance), 2. The rights of others, 3. General utility considerations, 4. Perfectionist values to be promoted for their own sake (i.e. art), and 5. Personal ends and commitments (i.e. finishing what you started). The political world concerns #2, #3, and #4. # 1 and #4 are involved, of course, in the distribution of favors and politicians’ personal ambitions, but that is neither here nor there. Nagel’s contribution here might be to say that between considerations of rights, utility, and perfection/art, a government cannot make a reasoned decision. Those sources of value are distinct from one another and no good comparison or prioritization is possible.
This might be true, but it has limitations. For instance, it doesn’t help us prioritize within one sphere of value (i.e. which rights are more important?). And there is a deeper problem with this conclusion as presented here (of which Nagel doubtlessly has something more subtle and ingenious to say). It is that if we cannot make reasoned comparisons between these things, no comparison or prioritization is ever bad or wrong. But we know that if the government directed all of its funding to artists that would be a bad prioritization. How do we know this? Upon what principle to we make this conclusion?
3. Intuition. It is certainly an intuitive conclusion that this would be a bad prioritization. And that may be all we can say-that we make intuitive judgments about which policy or end is more important and we hope our intuition is a good moral guide (such that we have religious faith in it?). That will not make the philosophers among us very happy to end it right there. Most contemporary political philosophers begin with intuitions and then rigorously dissect and test them, attempting to discover the deeper moral principles that might have justification apart from intuition itself (or, more likely, are justified by some deeper intuition).
4. Maximization. It seems that the question we should ask ourselves and our intuitions is: What are we trying to maximize? If we can decide what it is politics should be maximizing-autonomy, happiness, self-respect, money, power, love, etc.-then we can do a much better (or clearer) job of prioritization. It might also be the case, following some of Nagel’s logic, that we want to maximize a few values-though that raises question of how we rank those two values.
But, generally, we can prioritize those policies that increase what we are maximizing. I think this is where the ultimate answer will be discovered, but there are at least one empirical and one theoretical problem with this. The empirical problem is that it is almost impossible to measure how much a policy will increase “happiness” or “self-respect.” That, however, does not mean that we can make no progress on this front. The theoretical problem is that conceptions of rights don’t generally mesh well with notions of maximization. Some consider rights as social guarantees that are distinct from utilitarian and maximization concerns (i.e. you let the innocent man go free even if the mob who thinks he’s guilty will cause much destruction). So, it’s a little awkward to account for rights while attempting to maximize. The response to this might be to discover what it is rights are protecting-it is probable something like utility and/or happiness and thereby can be accounted for by some criterion of maximization concerned with utility and/or happiness.
I hope I haven’t made this issue more confusing. My aim was simply to point out that prioritization is a problem, and a very important one at that.
-Jake
Related posts:
- Human rights and gay marriage
- Healthcare, Rights, and Human Rights
- Healthcare and human rights cont.
- What morality “means”
- Obama’s change: minor or major?
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[...] 5. It ignores basically every other moral concern with no justification. The right to make contracts and the right to property, if we prioritize them completely, might preclude or constrain the operation of other concepts, like equality, recognition, positive freedom, etc. Libertarians, goes this argument, have not sufficiently justified their prioritization. [...]
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[...] first point reveals the problem of prioritization I discussed in an earlier post and the second shows, once more, how the factual and [...]
[...] program, which called for a return to the moon by 2020. This is another case of “the prioritization problem,” which is the difficulty we often have in justifying why one valuable aim is worth more or [...]